Register today for the upcoming NIH Geroscience Summit!

Register today for the upcoming NIH Geroscience Summit!

Will you join us in Bethesda, Maryland this coming October 30 and 31 to talk about aging research in a new way?

The Trans-NIH Geroscience Interest Group (GSIG), with the support of the Alliance for Aging Research and the Gerontological Society of America, has organized a major meeting on aging as a risk factor for most chronic diseases. We hope you’ll be able to attend. The meeting is free and open to the public, but registration closes soon. Please register today to reserve your place!

The Summit on Advances in Geroscience will bring together leading researchers in aging and disease for two days of conversations. We will discuss what we now know in geroscience—a multidisciplinary field that seeks to understand the relationship between aging and chronic disease—and explore where we should be going to translate discovery into health. Together, we hope to identify innovative approaches to improve health while we age. The key point is that the biology of aging and the biology of chronic disease are intimately linked. We hope the discussion will be open, and perhaps even a little provocative.

The Summit will be opened by Francis Collins, Director of the NIH. Keynotes will set the stage, with three talks covering:

frailty and disease in older people

an overview of the global burden of disease

a status report on current research in the biology of aging

Seven scientific sessions will each use short talks to open discussions on the interplay between specific aspects of the biology of aging and chronic diseases, such as inflammation, stress adaptation, and epigenetics and regulatory RNA. You can view the speakers and topics on this Summit Agenda (PDF, 224KB).

The agenda was developed by NIH staff, who devoted their time and knowledge to organizing an exciting program. Kevin Howcroft from the National Cancer Institute is the lead organizer for the Summit, along with Felipe Sierra, director of the NIA’s Division of Aging Biology. Felipe Sierra talks here about GSIG and the Summit:

Can NIH pay for my travel and hotel?

Unfortunately, no. There’s no funding available to support attendees’ travel or lodging costs. There are some details on the conference website about a special block of hotel rooms in the Bethesda area secured for the Summit.

What is this Trans-NIH Geroscience Interest Group (GSIG) that is co-sponsoring this meeting?

Established in October 2011 by a small group of us interested in the intersection between aging and health, GSIG now includes staff from 20 Institutes and Centers across the NIH. These participants have research portfolios that include aging or age-related diseases, or they do research in these areas themselves. The GSIG is one of the fastest growing interest groups at NIH, and has a number of important goals:

To promote discussion, sharing of ideas, and coordination of activities within the NIH

To raise awareness, both within and outside the NIH, of the role played by aging biology in the development of age-related processes and chronic disease through seminars, symposia, and workshops

To develop potential public/private partnerships through interactions with scientific societies, industry, and other institutions with related interests

To develop trans-NIH funding initiatives (including PAs, RFAs, and Common Fund initiatives) or other creative approaches to encourage research on basic biology of aging and its relationship to earlier life events, exposures, and diseases

Read more about the group on the GSIG webpage. There are dozens of scientific interest groups at the NIH, many of which host meetings that are open to the public. View a list of NIH interest groups here.

GSIG also hosts Seminars in Geroscience that might also be of interest to you.

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As a junior faculty interested in age-related vascular and metabolic dysfunction, this summit is an exciting opportunity for interactions with senior researchers not only in my area of interest but also for interactions with leaders in the field of aging biology and other age-related diseases that I would otherwise not be afforded. Despite the advancing age of the population, the importance of aging as a major risk factor and modifier of disease remains underappreciated. The Geroscience Summit is an exciting opportunity to bring together researchers interested in degenerative diseases with those interested in the basic biology of aging. These interactions promise the discovery of new common ground and collaborative opportunities from which important discoveries may be made to improve the clinical care of our older population.

Posted by Susan Peschin on Sep 07, 2013 - 3:34 pm

The Alliance for Aging Research is honored to be working with the GSA and the FNIH to support the Trans-NIH Geroscience Interest Group's upcoming summit. With 20 Institutes and Centers at the NIH taking part, this interest group is working to better understand and tackle the common denominator of age-related chronic diseases--the aging process itself. We look forward to hearing from the more than 50 experts from around the country who will be sharing their research, insight, and recommendations on how to better collaborate and move the research forward in this groundbreaking area. We invite and encourage disease-specific organizations, policymakers, and researchers across these disciplines to attend, and we look forward to seeing you there!
Susan Peschin, MHS
CEO
Alliance for Aging Research